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The most sensitive work environments, like nuclear power plants, demand the strictest security. Usually this is achieved by air-gapping computers from the Internet and preventing workers from inserting USB sticks into computers. When the work is classified or involves sensitive trade secrets, companies often also institute strict rules against bringing smartphones into the workspace, as these could easily be turned into unwitting listening devices.
But researchers in Israel have devised a new method for stealing data that bypasses all of these protections—using the GSM network, electromagnetic waves and a basic low-end mobile phone. The researchers are calling the finding a "breakthrough" in extracting data from air-gapped systems and say it serves as a warning to defense companies and others that they need to immediately "change their security guidelines and prohibit employees and visitors from bringing devices capable of intercepting RF signals," says Yuval Elovici, director of the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where the research was done.
The attack requires both the targeted computer and the mobile phone to have malware installed on them, but once this is done the attack exploits the natural capabilities of each device to exfiltrate data. Computers, for example, naturally emit electromagnetic radiation during their normal operation, and cell phones by their nature are "agile receivers" of such signals. These two factors combined create an "invitation for attackers seeking to exfiltrate data over a covert channel," the researchers write in a paper about their findings.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:11PM
This isn't about a one-way attack like stuxnet where the objective was to damage a system without receiving anything (more akin to a heat seeking missile). This is a quasi two way attack wherein the malware transmitted by a USB stick will allow the infected system to emit data like a beacon. The air-gapped part is the challenge. If you want to get data out of the system, you need a receiver. In this case, the cell phone is the receiver. The reason this is significant is some companies ban smartphones but may allow dumb phones. This hack demonstrates that even dumb phones can act as receivers. They also mention that a more powerful receiver (meaning one using a high gain antenna and advanced signal processing) which allows for higher bit rates and could allow the attacker to park a vehicle with said receiver outside of a building.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:31AM
Of course, all of those attacks could be mitigated by covering the computer in a Faraday cage.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:18PM
True. But how many sensitive systems are CURRENTLY in a faraday cage?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 29 2015, @07:07PM
I'm pretty sure I've heard about the possibility of turning internal computer wires into sending antennas by software years ago. Therefore I'd expect anything really security critical to be in Faraday cages, provided whoever is responsible for security is worth the money he earns.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.